The present invention relates to devices and methods that coordinate an external conversation process between entities with an internal workflow of one of the entities. More particularly, it relates to devices and methods that are compliant with an inter-enterprise conversation process standard for routing electronic commerce documents between enterprises.
E-business is moving toward a paradigm in which enterprises interact with each other through exchanging XML documents based on well-defined protocols such as SOAP, WSDL, ebXML, which enables them to interoperate their Web services in a dynamic and loosely coupled way [T. Bray, J. Paoli, C. M. Sperberg-McQueen, “Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 Specification”, February 1998, (http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml), EbXML.org, Business Process Specification Schema”, V1.01, 2001, SOAP, “Simple Object Access Protocol”, http://msdn.Microsoft.com/xml/general/so-apspec.asp, www.w3c.org, WSDL, “Web Service Description Language”, www.w3c.org.]. In order for enterprises to collaborate at the business-process level, channels must be developed to allow the business processes that run on their local sites to interact. Several Inter-enterprise Conversation Process (ICP) specification standards have been proposed such as ebXML BPSS (Business Process Specification Schema) [EbXML.org, Business Process Specification Schema”, V1.01, 2001], WSCI (Web Service Choreography Interface) [WSCI, “Web Service Choreography Interface”, Tech Report by Italio, SAP, BEA, Sun Microsystems. 2002], WSCL (Web Service Conversation Language) [WSCL, “Web Service Conversation Language”, HP Submission to W3C, www.w3c.org]. As shown in FIG. 1, an ICP specifies the choreography of document exchange as an abstract interface, leaving the processing and provisioning of documents to local business processes or services. In this illustration, two parties are represented by two columns of business documents. Transmission of an order 101 lends to an invoice 111. The invoice eventually prompts a payment 102, after which merchandise is shipped and a shipping notice 112 is generated. As illustrated in the figure, the two parties have internal processes that communicate through a conversation process. As an abstract interface, one ICP can be supported by a variety of business processes and services with different implementations. However, none of the ICPs specify how local business processes couple their internal and external processes.
Accordingly, an opportunity arises to develop methods and devices that coordinate between an external ICP and an internal workflow.